A Design Theory for Systems That Support Emergent Knowledge Processes

By M. Markus, Ann Majchrzak, Les Gasser. MIS Q., 2002

1,316 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper addresses the design problem of providing IT support for emerging knowledge processes (EKPs). EKPs are organizational activity patterns that exhibit three characteristics in combination: an emergent process of deliberations with no best structure or sequence; requirements for knowledge that are complex (both general and situational), distributed across people, and evolving dynamically; and an actor set that is unpredictable in terms of job roles or prior knowledge. Examples of EKPs include basic research, new product development, strategic business planning, and organization design. EKPs differ qualitatively from semi-structured decision making processes; therefore, they have unique requirements that are not all thoroughly supported by familiar classes of systems, such as executive information systems, expert systems, electronic communication systems, organizational memory systems, or repositories. Further, the development literature on familiar classes of systems does not provide adequate guidance on how to build systems that support EKPs. Consequently, EKPs require a new IS design theory, as explicated by Walls et al. (1992). We created such a theory while designing and deploying a system for the EKP of organization design. The system was demonstrated through subsequent empirical analysis to be successful in supporting the process. Abstracting from the experience of building this system, we developed an IS design theory for EKP support systems. This new IS design theory is an important theoretical contribution, because it both provides guidance to developers and sets an agenda for academic research. EKP design theory makes the development process more tractable for developers by restricting the range of effective features (or rules for selecting features) and the range of effective development practices to a more manageable set. EKP design theory also sets an agenda for academic research by articulating theory-based principles that are subject to empirical, as well as practical, validation.

Subfields: Management Information Systems, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/20953573e9728d2ce3886a71972fe5a4df33599a

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Citations in the corpus

Design science in the information systems discipline: an introduction to the special issue on design science research (2008, background): “Researchers addressing it build and evaluate IT artifacts that extend the boundaries of known applications of IT, addressing important problems heretofore not thought to be amenable to computational approaches (Hevner et al. 2004; Markus et al. 2002; Walls et al. 1992).”
External validity of sentiment mining reports: Can current methods identify demographic biases, event biases, and manipulation of reviews? (2014, background): “Next, design propositions describe effective relations between requirements and designs that can be subject to tests [18,20].”
Design Science in Information Systems Research (2004, methodology): “This build-and-evaluate loop is typically iterated a number of times before the final design artifact is generated (Markus et al. 2002).”
Information Technology and the Changing Fabric of Organization (2007, background): “handling unit (Markus et al. 2002).”
Assessing Information System Design Theory in Perspective: How Useful Was our 1992 Initial Rendition? (2004, neutral): “Markus, Majchrzak, and Gasser (2002) used ISDT for providing design principles for designing IS/IT support for emergent knowledge processes (EKP).”
Being Proactive: Where Action Research Meets Design Research (2005, neutral): “DR must pass both the tests of science and practice (Markus et al. 2002). In other words, DR is not atheoretical tinkering or aimed simply at market acceptance (Purao 2002). It should incorporate theory in the development of the artifact as well as make a theory-building contribution. This theory-ba”
Design theory for dynamic complexity in information infrastructures: the case of building internet (2010, methodology): “It is a design theory, because it consists of ‘how to’ design principles and rules (Walls et al ., 1992, 2004; Markus et al ., 2002) backed by ‘because of’ justifications derived from a kernel theory – Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) theory (Holland, 1995).”
Toward a Theory of Knowledge Reuse: Types of Knowledge Reuse Situations and Factors in Reuse Success (2001, methodology): “Examples include manufacturing workers using an expert system for organization design knowledge [50], consulting firms’ clients making use of structured expertise as in ASK Ernie [39], and customers accessing a firm’s technical support FAQ lists.”
The Anatomy of a Design Theory (2007, neutral): “With respect to theory for design and action, Simon (1996) is the well-recognized proponent of this form of theory, and others have followed his lead (Iivari, 1983; Markus et al., 2002; Walls et al., 1992).”
Digital innovation: A review and synthesis (2019, methodology): “ISDT provides general processes and approaches for designing classes of IS artifacts, such as IS security policies (Siponen & Iivari, 2006) and systems to support emergent knowledge processes (Markus et al., 2002) and are generally nonadaptive.”
Perceived Individual Collaboration Know-How Development Through Information Technology - Enabled Contextualization: Evidence from Distributed Teams (2005, positive): “Our study follows recommendations by Markus et al. (2002) to develop theories of principles for designing IT systems.”